


this clock never seemed so alive

by callmeonetrack



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 10:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9231242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmeonetrack/pseuds/callmeonetrack
Summary: One groundbreaking night leads to a new beginning for Kara and Lee.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU story where Razor never happened. The last time Kara was on the Pegasus was during the events seen in The Captain’s Hand, at the end of which she returned to Galactica to be the CAG. It is set on the night of the groundbreaking ceremony on New Caprica, which is approximately four months after the Caprica rescue mission and Baltar’s election to the presidency.

_ Tick. _

_ Tock. _

_ Tick. _

_ Tock. _

The sound was loud in the empty rec room and Kara’s eyes involuntarily flicked to the clock. She regretted it immediately, shifting restlessly. A whole six hours till CAP still. She laid down another card, and another, and one more, and then sighed, scrapping the worn cardboard into a big messy pile. Twenty-three games of solitaire in a row, not a single win yet. 

Kara fidgeted, propped her feet up on the seat across from her and grimaced. Despite the stillness of the room, she felt wired, like she was coming off a stim-fuelled triple rotation. Never in a million millennia would she wish the cylons came back, but man, she’d forgotten how boring peacetime could be. 

It wasn’t usually this quiet, of course. Lee had let almost everyone go down for the groundbreaking ceremony on the planet, insisting the Beast could run on a skeleton crew for one night. Hell, even Commander Tightass himself was taking leave. Probably planning another “secret” hookup with Dualla, Kara thought, rolling her eyes. It’s not like the two of them were fooling anyone. Lee wasn’t half as discreet as he thought he was. Hell, it was pretty frakking obvious to anyone who’d seen his dopey permagrin that he’d been getting laid on a regular basis for the past six months. 

Not that she could blame him. It’d been more than two months since she’d had anyone to scratch that particular itch with, and the gods knew her mood was a bit worse for it. Sammy had decided he wanted to settle almost immediately after Baltar announced they were giving up the search for Earth and camping out on the new planet.   

The announcement had turned Baltar into a frakking hero with most of the fleet. The planet was barely even habitable, but people were tired. They were sick of living on the run and the cylons’ sudden disappearance (sudden and _frakking suspicious_ , as far as Kara was concerned) gave them hope. But she couldn’t help feeling as though they were making a mistake settling here. _Earth_ was their destination. She’d known it deep in her bones when she’d stood in that tomb under the stars, with the breeze of the night air washing over her and the grass tickling her skin. It was what they were meant to find, their hope for the future. Someday, she’d walk on Earth again. 

The Admiral and the President—Roslin, the _real_ President—had said they couldn’t do anything. Their hands were tied. But Kara knew she had to find a way to convince Baltar, or Zarek, or whoever would frakking well listen. They had to keep going.

_Frakking Baltar_ , she thought, scowling. 

“Cubit for your thoughts?”

Kara looked up with a start, to find Lee in the doorway, arms crossed, watching her with a bemused grin.  “Hey,” she said, surprised to see him. Kara kicked out a chair his way, and Lee walked over slowly and settled down. “What are you doing here?”

Lee didn’t answer, just reached for the bottle in front of Kara and one of the glasses and poured himself some of the new brew they’d been making at the settlement. “What were you scowling about?”

“Oh, just our esteemed frakking president.” She shook her head. “I’d really like to know who the morons were that voted for his crazy ass.”

Lee raised an eyebrow at that, but just scowled and stayed silent.  _Okay, got it, Baltar's still a sore subject apparently._  Kara rushed on. “You seen all those flyers he got Gaeta to post everywhere? I bet he’s down there just frakking yammering on about ‘building a better tomorrow’!” she hooted, gaze dropping to her glass. “Such a load of crap.”

Kara took a drink, hissing a little against the burn of the rotgut liquor, and looked up to find Lee watching her with a funny expression.

“Mmm,” he said. “Bright and shiny futures are overrated, right?”

A series of images of another night in an empty rec room flashed through her brain and Kara took a breath, blinked them away. “Yeah, well…” she shrugged. “So how come you and Dee aren’t down there, rolling in the New Caprica hay or whatever?”

He frowned, raised his glass again, and downed the contents. Then he refilled it, lifted it again, and mumbled something into it.

Kara froze, wondering if she heard right. “What was that?”

Lee sighed. “I said, it’s over.” His tone was final, as though that was all he had to say on the subject.

Silence stretched for a moment in the small room, but all kinds of questions thundered through Kara’s brain.

“Really? ’Cause you seemed—“

“Kara.”

“No, I mean it, you seemed really hap-”

“KARA.”

“Well, that’s it?” she leaned forward, staring at him expectantly. “You aren’t going to say anything else except ‘It’s over?’”

“Drop it.”

“But—”

He shot her _the look._

“Fine. “ She sat back again, picked up her glass and busied herself with staring at the inch of liquid left. From under lowered lashes, she covertly glanced at Lee, who was staring into his own glass. His face was maddeningly blank and it was obvious he wasn’t going to talk about whatever had prompted the split.

They fell silent and the ticking of the clock filled the room again attracting Kara’s focus. The old-fashioned analog timepiece was an anomaly on this ship, with its chrome and glass and digital everything, and it made her nostalgic for the Bucket. Kara had been surprised when the Admiral had asked her last week to swap places with Showboat and be the Pegasus CAG. He’d merely said something about her talents being better utilized over here.

At the moment, however, her talents were definitely being _underutilized_. Kara sighed restlessly. “It’s really frakking weird being here when the place is practically empty. Who’s still on?”

“Rush and Stormy are out on CAP. Sebastian, Hoshi, Kowalsky are in CIC…”

Kara listened to him rattle off a handful of names, junior lieutenants and petty officers, the lot of them.

“All the senior staff is planetside?” She asked, surprised.

Lee shrugged, a slightly bashful look on his face as he gazed over at her. “I figured we could handle anything that came up.”

 _We_. The simple syllable made her blood rush slightly. It’d been a long time since there’d been a _we_. Kara aimed her smile into her shot glass and took a drink, then let her gaze flicker back up to meet Lee’s. He was still staring, eyes unnaturally blue under the bright fluorescents of the Pegasus rec room.   

“I guess it’s just you and me then,” she said, the words slower and more deliberate than the careless utterance she’d been aiming for.

Lee didn’t blink. “Guess so.”

****

Eight hands of triad later and Kara’s blood was strumming in her veins. She was sick of this room, sick of the cards, sick of everything but the company, in fact. So she threw her hand—a shitty two on a run anyway—down, and turned to Lee. “Ugh. Never thought I’d say this, Apollo, but if I look at another triad card anytime soon, I’m gonna scream.”

“I don’t suppose it’s a coincidence that you declare this just when I get the best hand I’ve had all night.” He sighed loudly, but it was so exaggerated that Kara knew he was kidding, so she nudged his forearm with her elbow and he threw his cards down. “Well, what do you want to do, Starbuck?”

She thought quickly. On Galactica, she knew every corner and cubbyhole, but she hadn’t seen much of the Pegasus in her two brief tours here. “It’s your ship, Lee.” She waved a hand at him, smirking. “Show me the best of the Beast. Take me on a tour of the illustrious home of Commander Lee Adama.”

Lee rolled his eyes. “Considering most of my waking hours are spent either in quarters or the CIC…” he trailed off and Kara noted, for the first time, the lines bracketing his eyes and mouth. He looked older. Tired, she realized. She wasn’t sure if it was an effect of the breakup or just dealing with the burdens of command, but either way, she didn’t like it. 

Kara stood and tugged him up and out of his chair too. “Well then, this is the perfect opportunity to change that, right?” Her nerves jangled, and she bounced on the balls of her feet, swinging her arms back and forth. “C’mon, let’s go somewhere totally new, some place you’ve never even been.” 

“I’m back on duty in eight hours, Kara,” he protested, though he didn’t stop moving. “The only place I should be going is my rack.”

“Oh c’mon, don’t be that way. Stick around. The night’s young, Apollo,” she grinned wickedly, slipping in front of him and turning to face him as they stepped through the hatch and into the empty corridor. “And sleep is for the weak.” She winked and pivoted and took off running, somehow confident Lee would follow.

He did.

****

“Seriously, Lee?” Kara said, staring incredulously at him. “This is the best you’ve got? A highlight of your grand tour is the gym?”

“What exactly were you expecting? A circus tent?”

“I dunno,” she rolled her eyes. “Something a hell of a lot more interesting than the weight room, for frak’s sake.”

“Hey, you only said ‘places I haven’t been’. Well, I haven’t been here.” He frowned.

Kara raised an eyebrow, then let her gaze slide over Lee’s frame. “You can’t really be telling me that you haven’t worked out in the – what?—six months you've been over here? I call bullshit.”

“I didn’t say I hadn’t worked out, I just said I haven’t been _here_. At the gym.” He shook his head. “No one wants to spar with the guy who holds their rank pins.”

“Aw, poor Apollo,” she said, flashing him a mock-pitying look. “Lonely at the top, eh, commander?”

She’d been joking, but he flinched, a rueful look passing over Lee’s face suddenly. “Yeah, well, I’m sure it’s a foreign concept to you, Starbuck, but most officers don’t have a burning desire to punch out their superior officers. Or if they do, they don’t indulge those.”

“Everyone’s got a skill?” She grinned.

But Lee just shook his head, and Kara actually did feel sorry for teasing then. Now that she thought about it, it was easy to see how the past few months must have been pretty rough for him. New ship, new crew, no one to vent to or blow off steam with. Well, _that_ at least was something she could fix.

Kara  walked over to a cubby in the wall and pulled out two pairs of boxing gloves and tossed one set to Lee. “Alright, let’s go.”

“What? Now?” His eyes were round with surprise.

“Yeah, come on. I haven’t had a good bout in ages either. Helo’s usually up for a few rounds, but he’s…uh…a little preoccupied with everything since…Hera.” Lee nodded, frowning, as Kara walked back over to him. “Kat’s always up for a fight, of course, but she’s all haymakers. No challenge.”

He took the gloves, but didn’t move to put them on. “And what about Anders?” Kara paused, her head lifting. “Don’t tell me the pyramid jock couldn’t handle a few rounds with the mighty Starbuck?”

The words were clipped and careful, and it was pretty clear he wasn’t talking just about the boxing. Kara swallowed hard, but she lifted her chin and looked Lee straight in the eye. “He pulled his punches,” she said. “Sammy wasn’t much for fighting actually.”

That was a bit of an understatement. Sam took everything in stride, so he hadn’t understood the side of Kara that needed to rage and rant and shove things occasionally. Oh he’d let her do all of those things, but he wouldn’t ever fight back. Ironically, the one time he actually did was about the planet. Their first real fight was also their last.

Despite the resistance, Sam wasn’t made for war. He’d made it off Caprica and now that a little peace and quiet was up for grabs, he wanted his share. Kara couldn’t blame him, but she wasn’t done fighting. Probably never would be. She couldn’t seem to find the right words to make him understand: the fleet wasn’t a job, but her home. Her _family_. She would never abandon them to settle down and play house on that frakking mudball. 

Anticipation coursed through her veins as she tugged the closures on her gloves tight with her teeth and batted her hands together. The vinyl made a dull thudding noise. Her pulse quickened and she grinned as she faced off against Lee. It’d been a long time since they’d done this, but as they circled each other, she remembered. Remembered the way his body moved as they parried. The quick steps, the brow drawn in concentration. The way he dropped his right. Then his fist shot out, fast, faster than she remembered, and his left hook snapped her head to the side. She shook it off, refocused on Lee, who was smirking slightly.

She grinned, answered with a punishing drive to his ribs, and his breath whooshed out. Kara danced backwards, the throbbing pain flaring in her cheek like a match touching a fuse, and she felt lit up suddenly. Months of restless, halting energy catalyzed into drive and motion and sweat and blood and every blow was a welcome pain. They sparred until their bodies shook with fatigue, leaning heavily on one another, sweat-soaked skin locked in a clinch.

“I think,” Lee gasped, “we should call it a draw.”

Kara nodded, and tried to take a step back, but her rubbery legs failed her and the next thing she knew, she was sliding, falling to the mat and taking Lee down with her. They both groaned, and Kara flopped to the side, rolling onto her back and panting as she tried to catch her breath. She braced a glove under her arm and wriggled her hand free, picked at the laces and yanked the other one off, letting them drop to the mat. Endorphins rushed pleasantly through her body and Kara sighed, exhausted but unexpectedly… _sated_. She’d needed that.

Kara snickered suddenly. Kinda pathetic when a boxing match gave you the biggest thrill you’d had in months. She probably should’ve went planetside and found some civvie to work this energy off with.

“What’s so funny?”

Her head turned to Lee, who was pulling his own gloves off as he stared at her, all blue eyes and bewilderment, and Kara smirked.

“You mean, aside from your right cross? You know you drop your shoulder, right?”

 “Yeah, well…” Suddenly, he rolled her way, close enough that his nose was nearly brushing her temple, and Kara’s breath caught. “You know that you stink, right?” Lee was grinning now, clearly impressed with his fifth-grade insult, as he rocked backwards and pushed himself up off the mat.

Kara lifted up onto her elbows. “A dig at my hygiene? Seriously?” But she grasped the hand he held out, let him pull her up onto her feet. “So predictable, Lee. Weak. Really weak.”

They fell into step together as they headed to the hatch, and he bumped his hip into hers. “Not as weak as your left jab.”

“If I hadn’t just got done thoroughly kicking your ass, I’d kick your ass right now,” she said mildly.

He laughed and slung a sweaty arm across her shoulders. “Aw, don’t worry, Kara. You look good wearing my bruises.”  
  
“Frak you.”

****

“Tell me again why I’m not showering in the privacy of my quarters, Starbuck.” Lee stepped through the hatch, carrying the change of clothes he’d picked up.

“Because,” she sighed, rolling her eyes, “the point of this little tour, Apollo, since you seem to have forgotten, is to go places where you haven’t been. Now tell me, have you ever been in the Pegasus junior officer’s head?”

He smiled wryly. “No.”

Kara nodded. “Exactly. Besides it’ll be good for you to live like the common people, for one night, Commander. You can remember all the joys of communal bathing that you’re missing out on. ” She fished a pair of flip flops out of her shower kit and waved him in his direction. “The ever-present danger of catching someone’s toe fungus. Five-minute water rations in a shower that takes ten minutes to heat up. And my favorite,” she paused, grabbed a faded blue towel off the bench, “the closest facsimile to sandpaper in the remaining universe to wipe your ass with. “

Lee snorted. “Well, gee, when you put it that way, how can I resist?”

He stepped towards a stall and lifted his arms to strip off his tanks, and Kara decided that her reflexes must have been impaired by their sparring match. Clearly that was why she was having trouble dragging her eyes away from the play of muscles in his back. Kara shook her head, and turned around, before she did something incredibly stupid. Stripping her own damp clothes off, she moved into the shower stall and twisted the faucet, slipping under the spray without even waiting for the water to heat up. A little cold shower couldn’t hurt anyway, she figured.

Twenty minutes later, she twisted the dial off, sighing in pleasure. She’d happily used at least three of the absentee pilots’ rations. A voice floated to her from outside the stall. 

“Ah, she lives. I was thinking I might have to send an SAR party in after you.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been able to take a shower like that? We’re talking years, Lee.”

“Yes, well you certainly made your pleasure abundantly clear.” He coughed. “In fact, I’m pretty sure they heard your _orgasmic moaning_ down on New Caprica.”

“Next time, I’ll make sure to add your name in there, sir. Give ‘em something to really talk about.” Her brain caught up with her mouth a split-second too late and Kara froze. It was the kind of thing she wouldn’t have thought twice about saying to Lee six months or a year ago, but now… Things were _different_.

And she couldn’t even pray to the Lords of Kobol that he hadn’t heard it, because the complete silence from outside her stall made it totally obvious that he most definitely _had_. She cursed inwardly and racked her brain for some way to salvage things, when Lee’s voice, slightly higher than usual, came bouncing off the titles.

“Yeah, yeah. Just hurry up, would ya? I’m ready for the next stop on Kara Thrace’s magical mystery tour.”

She shook her head, smiling as the tension fled from her body at his casual response. Good ole’ Lee.

“Hey, I thought this was your tour,” she called as she snagged her towel, dried off quickly and wrapped it around herself, then stepped out of the stall, saying, “So you tell me, where’s our next...”

Lee was standing by the bench, drying his hair with one towel, another slung low enough on his hips to be officially indecent. Her mouth went dry and Kara thought seriously about stepping back into the stall for another blast of frigid water. “Stop,” she finished lamely and belatedly.

This time her eyes definitely lingered on the cut muscles defining his stomach and hips. Water droplets actually sparkled on his skin still. Some old Caprican proverb about cleanliness being next to godliness popped into Kara’s head and she found it exceedingly apt. When she finally dragged her eyes back up to his face, she found Lee staring too…his gaze locked not on her face but on the tucked line of her towel across her chest. Kara flushed, one hand instinctively creeping up to check the twist of the cloth.

They’d seen each other in various stages of undress over the years, of course, as battlestars had little to no place for modesty. But here and now, they were alone, exceptionally so, and it had been months since they’d seen each other at all, nevermind like this. Kara dropped her hand. Thought about dropping the towel too, but just waited, watching him watching her. 

After a long moment, Lee’s eyes slid upwards, incredibly, deliberately slowly, and one eyebrow raised. “Hungry?”

Her lips curved. “Starving.”

****

Ten minutes later—once again fully clothed—they slipped into the galley on the lower deck. Kara hopped up on the long work table in the center of the room and Lee, predictably, headed straight for the storeroom.

“Make me something good from your fancy foodstores, Apollo.”

“We’re better off than Galactica,” he admitted, “but we’ve still got limited resources here. What do you want?”

“Anything that’s not made of noodles.” It seemed like that was all they ever ate anymore.

A few minutes later, Lee came out of the store room loaded down with bags and boxes of ingredients, which he dumped on the table next to her. Kara surveyed the haul: flour, powdered eggs, sugar substitute… Her eyebrows raised. “Cookies?”

Lee nodded, looking smug. “We’re out of some stuff, so I’ll have to improvise.”

“Don’t suppose there were any chocolate chips in there?” she asked, poking at the bags on the table.

He slapped her hand. “Negative. Now stop pawing through my supplies.” He smiled sweetly. “If you’re good, I’ll put walnuts in them.”

She widened her eyes, voice rife with sarcasm. “Oh, joy. Something to look forward to.” As she watched him start measuring out ingredients though, humming some tune all the while, Kara realized she _was_ looking forward to it. It’d been a long time since she’d had homemade cookies, and Lee was, if memory served her correctly, an excellent cook. She and Zak had pressed him into service plenty of times when he’d come to visit them.

She smiled at a particular memory. “You remember that birthday cake Zak tried to make you?”

Lee cringed with recognition. “That was, hands down, the worst thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

“He cut that huge piece and you ate the whole thing, too,” Kara grinned. “Gods, I don’t know how you choked it down.”

He shook his head. “Zak just looked so damn proud of himself. I couldn’t let him down, you know?”

A sharp stab of guilt edged through her at the words, but Kara just nodded. “Yeah.”

It was quiet for a moment, then Lee sighed. “Sometimes I miss him so much it hurts. Like a pain,” he thudded a fist into his chest, “right here.”

A lump swelled in her throat and Kara nodded again, unable to speak this time. She ducked her head, blinking furiously and trying to get herself under control.

“Hey. Hey, Kara,” Lee’s voice was soft, and his hip bumped her knee as he twisted and leaned in. “I’m-, I’m sorry, I didn’t—” His hand touched momentarily on her shoulder, squeezing lightly. “I wasn’t _blaming_ you, okay?”

“I know. It’s fine,” Kara shrugged away from his hand, his penetrating gaze. “I just…” the words for what she felt all seemed so inadequate, and in the end, she just settled on, “I miss him too.”

Lee squeezed her shoulder again, then slid his hand down, covering her own, which were clenched together in her lap. His thumb brushed over hers quickly once. “You don’t wear his ring anymore.”

It had broken nearly a week ago, just before she came onboard the Pegasus, in fact. Zak had bought the simple tin band for a few cubits at a summer carnival they’d gone to. He’d proposed on a whim, the aftereffect of a day filled with roller coaster rides and cotton candy kisses. And though she’d never said as much to anyone, Kara had often wondered if, had things turned out differently, his feelings for her might have eventually dissolved like so much spun sugar, too. When the ring had snagged on the underside of her viper while she was doing maintenance and split open, Kara had been sad, of course, but somewhere down deep, she couldn’t help but feel a measure of relief as well. Like maybe it was the universe’s way of saying she could lay that particular burden down for a while.

“I don’t need a ring to remember him,” she sighed, tired now. “But it’s been three years, Lee.” Kara shrugged. “Maybe it’s time, you know?” She met his eyes slowly. “To move forward.” 

His face tightened and he droppeed his hand, stepped to the side and picked up the bowl of ingredients, staring into it. “With Anders?”

“Huh?” She stared at him in confusion. “What are you talking about? We broke up.”

“C’mon Kara, I thought he was your _man_ , your personal property, isn’t that right? You were hung up on him for months and you risked your life to get him off Caprica, and now, what? You’re just gonna give up?” She watched him beat the mixed ingredients a little extra vigorously with every new word, and raised her eyebrows, her own anger starting to prickle.

“Not that I owe you any frakking explanations, Lee, but Sam and I are done. He’s settling on the planet and I… I’m not. I’m not leaving the Fleet.”

His glance flashed to her briefly. He looked unconvinced.

 “I can’t. Not with Earth out there.” She bit her lip. “Besides, what he wants…” Kara shrugged. “I can’t give him.”

She’d tried to explain to Sam that settling on New Caprica meant giving up on Earth. And that was something Kara would never do. Not after the tomb. No, this settlement was a mistake, a step in the wrong direction, and if she’d mustered out, gone down there with Sam, Kara knew that eventually she would have gotten trapped in that life.

Kara could feel Lee’s eyes on her and she looked up at him, annoyed that he was making her think about this, but his face held no anger now. Lee looked thoughtful, and he sounded tentative, like he was fumbling for the right words, when he said, “Do you wish you could though? I mean, would you be happier, do you think? If there was no Earth. If things were…different.”

Kara paused long and hard before answering. “I don’t know, Lee. I guess I wish a lot of things were different.”

His eyes widened a little and Kara expected him to ask for clarification, demanding to analyze every syllable, but for once Lee let it go, just turning his attention back to the mixing bowl. An awkward silence fell and Kara sighed, wondering when this little excursion had taken such a turn for the maudlin. “Well, since we’re doing all this heartwarming sharing and everything, I think you should spill the beans. What happened with Dee?”

He smiled slightly, and shook his head. “Nice try, Kara, but I told you I’m not talking about it.”

“That hardly seems fair, Lee.” She put a little pout on for good measure.

His gaze was stern for all of a minute, before he finally caved and sighed. “Fine. Look, it’s not a big deal. Dee’s great, but she and I were never really going to... go anywhere. The relationship had run its course.”

“Ah ha,” Kara cried, reaching down and swiping a finger through the cookie batter Lee had started to scoop out onto a baking pan and popped it between her lips. Her mouth full of batter, she said, “So you were the one to break it off?” 

“…Not exactly.”

“She dumped you?” Kara raised an eyebrow in disbelief. Maybe Dee wasn’t as smart as Kara had always thought she was. Lee had been a definite upgrade from Billy. “You must have done something really—” She widened her eyes with feigned innocence, smirking.“Crap, Lee, you didn’t start seeing that hooker again, did you?”

He stared at her in frustration, then huffed a little laugh. “Shut the frak up, alright.” Lee turned and loaded the cookie pan into one of the big industrial ovens. “Nobody dumped anyone. We just had a mutual and amicable parting of the ways.” He didn’t quite meet her eyes when he said it though, and Kara was pretty sure there was more to the story, but she decided to let it drop…for now.

“Okay,” she shrugged, swiping the spoon out of the mixing bowl and licking it clean of the batter. “But if Galactica’s communications officer suddenly starts mysteriously ordering their pilots to open fire on the Pegasus, I guess we’ll know who to blame!”

Lee pulled a face at her cheery tone, “Thanks. That makes me feel so much better, Starbuck.”

“I’m just here to help, Apollo. It’s what I do.”

Lee smirked, moved closer again, his eyes tracking her tongue as she lapped at the sweet uncooked dough. Noting the intense stare, Kara paused. _This was much better_ , she thought, and she opened her mouth wide, wrapping her lips around the head of the spoon. She didn’t break eye contact as she sucked the utensil clean in a showy, over-the-top, lip-smacking way. Lee leaned closer, wedging between her knees against the table edge and pulling the spoon free from her hand. “Is that what you do?” he murmured, low enough to make a little shiver run up her spine.

Kara swallowed hard, tried to think of a coherent response, and failed. Minutes ticked by but she couldn’t tear her eyes from his, and finally the clock on the oven interrupted, the timer buzzing insistently.

 _Just in the nick of time_ , Kara thought, confused as to whether she was pleased or peeved. Luckily, the cookies made an excellent and tasty distraction.

****

“Wait, this is it? Our final destination?” Kara cackled, as they climbed the final steps to the raised lookout at Pegasus’s foredeck. “Don’t you think this is a little cheesy, Lee?” I mean, the _observation deck_ , really?” She smirked. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to take advantage of me, Apollo.”

He snorted. “If I wanted to take advantage of you, I probably wouldn’t have to expend this much effort, honestly.”

“Seriously, did you just impugn my virtue right there?” She shook her head, grinning. “Because for a guy who used to date a prostitute, that’s pretty—”

“KARA!”

She laughed and slipped through the hatch into the room, then stopped short. She’d been expecting something like the Galactica had: a medium-sized room with a few rows of stadium seating and a good-sized window. But the observation deck on Pegasus was a true deck, easily twice the length of Galactica’s and with a window that stretched eight feet high and fronted one whole stretch of exterior bulkhead. The view, which encompassed the Galactica and the rest of the fleet, New Caprica beyond, and an endless stretch of stars in the background, was literally breathtaking.

“It’s something else, huh?” She heard the pride in Lee’s voice.

“It’s amazing.” Kara stepped forward all the way to the edge of the window, raising one hand to the glass.

“It’s easy to forget sometimes, especially now that I’m not flying, how massive it is out there. How small we are.”

Her eyes fixed on the planet, with its swirled surface of grays and blues and browns. It looked beautiful from here, bewitching even. 

Kara's throat felt tight, swollen, and she asked, “You think we’ll be stuck here forever, Lee? The rest of our lives, circling this planet? Waiting for the cylons to come back?” she took a deep breath. “Do you think we’ll ever search for Earth again?”

“I don’t know.”  

The words were closer now, and she could feel him behind her. “We have to try, Lee. We have to try to convince them. It’s important.” Kara could sense the warmth of him at her back. “Will you help me?”

“Do you really need to ask?”

She smiled into the darkness, a wave of gratitude and relief sweeping through her.

Silence filled the next few moments, and then Lee spoke. “That’s the Andromeda Nebula, right?” He pointed over her shoulder to a hazy blur in the distance.

“No, it’s over there,” she pointed further to the left. “Didn’t they teach you anything in all those fancy navigational classes you took at War College?”

“Guess not. Good thing I have you to keep me on the straight and narrow, eh?”

She nodded. “Admit it. You’d be lost without me, Apollo.” Kara grinned, her eyes catching his in the reflection of the glass, waiting for his inevitable snappy comeback. But his face was solemn, serious, as he stared back at her.

“That was a joke, Lee.” Nothing. She turned to face him, eyebrows raising. “ Lee? Funny? Ha ha?”

“That’s why Dee broke up with me.”

Kara’s eyes widened slightly, her smile faltering briefly, before she recovered it and said, “Because you thoroughly lack a sense of humor?” She swallowed, cleared her throat. “Really, you think she would’ve noticed that a while ago, considering—“

“Because I asked my father to transfer you.” His voice, quiet but strong with determination now, cut over her words, and Kara paused, her breath catching. “And not her.”

Time froze. Everything went still. Her gaze skittered away for a second, then back, fixing on his as she spoke, the words slow and deliberate. “Well…you— _the Pegasus_ needed a good CAG.” 

“The Pegasus _had_ a good CAG. _I_ needed _you_.”

And there it was. The answer she’d been waiting for. Kara couldn’t breathe suddenly, and she couldn’t look away from Lee’s beseeching, terrifyingly open face.

“I missed you,” he whispered.

Kara sucked in a ragged breath. “I- I missed you, too.”

Her head swirled with something almost like déjà vu and the inevitability of this moment suddenly overwhelmed Kara. Everything these past few years—all of the fights, all of the separations, all of the other people—maybe they’d just been fooling themselves. Maybe all of that had just been part of the countdown. The one that had started years ago when she’d opened her apartment door to this man and the one that led to this moment here on a forgotten battleship at the ends of the universe.

Lee shifted closer, almost leaning into her. “What if this _is_ it? The rest of our lives, Kara.” His hands settled on her waist. “How do you want to spend it?” She felt as much as saw him take a breath, his chest expanding against her. “Who do you want to spend it with?”

Kara could feel the coldness of the glass pressed against her shoulders. Beyond it lay the fleet, the planet, the universe.

And before her… before her, lay the whole world.  

Her hands shook as she raised them to the collar of his jacket, then curled her fingers in the lapels, tugging Lee forward and pressing her mouth tightly to his. 

They stayed that way for untold minutes, time losing its meaning temporarily, until they finally broke apart. Kara cupped his face in her hands, her thumbs stroking his cheeks, and spoke finally. “You.” 

He smiled then, his face shining brighter than any far away planet at the simple, unequivocal answer, and her heart swelled. Lee pulled her close again, wrapping his arms around her in a tight hug, and she rested her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes. 

Kara drew a deep breath. She’d fought this for so long, telling herself that finding Earth was the key, the prerequisite. That if they could reach the planet, make it there through some combination of sacrifice and stubbornness and sheer force of will, then someday, they might actually earn that chance for a bright, shiny future after all. 

But maybe she’d had it all backwards, she realized now. Maybe they needed this, to believe that there could be bright shiny futures, before they could find Earth. Maybe only together would they be strong enough to make it there at all.

A smile slowly spread across her face and Kara hugged Lee tighter. 

It was good to be wrong.


End file.
